About
Books I’ve been readingJames A. (Nick) Nichols, III was born in Rome, Georgia USA in 1951. He attended Darlington School for seven years and then Georgia Tech.
At Darlington he started off a bit slow with crummy grades, was a bit nerdy and not exactly a hit with the girls, but graduated Cum Laude, banged out out a respectable 1330 on the SATs, and took AP English, Math and Physics courses as a Senior. He could never quite make the varsity basketball team. But he did study Latin for three years, German for two, and Spanish for one.
Webpages I’ve been bookmarkingAt Georgia Tech he earned his Bachelor of Electrical Engineering degree, with Honor, through the Cooperative Program in which he alternated quarters at school and working for Georgia Power Company (yep, it basically paid for his college education).
My personal blogAs a “coop student” he drew a bazillion service sketches for the distribution engineers, worked on the line crew (working side by side with seasoned linemen for several months is a real education for a young man!), worked the trouble desk (a must-do experience for anyone working in utilities), and worked with the substation test crew (really cool to trip those breakers and scare the hell out of some unsuspecting sole).
My Homepage PortalHe studied German for an additional two years at Georgia Tech and participated in the University System of Georgia’s Studies Abroad Program, taking three classes in German Philology at the University of Nuremberg, Germany.
He found calculus easy, thermodynamics and electromagnetic theory difficult, and the course “Random Signals and Noise” taught by a Bell Labs engineer a blur.
After college, Nick was hired by Alan Franklin to join the Interconnections and Reliability Group that Alan was supervising at the time at Southern Company Services in Birmingham, Alabama. Alan went on to eventually be named Chairman of the Board for the Southern Company.
Nick, on the otherhand, noodled around hacking on the Honeywell 6000 over a 300 baud accoustically-coupled teletype, transferred to Georgia Power in Atlanta, and eventually left after five years to work in consulting where he learned everything he has ever since needed to know about bulk power supply from a Thai national of Chinese heritage who made his way as a cook in New York city (and a real gourmet) named Janjai Chayavadhanangkur.
Nick was diagnosed with a malignant tumor at the age of 35 (when his first son was six), had surgery and radiation treatments, was in the hospital for three months and eventually fully recovered from a horrible experience. The emotional and financial burdens were high, leading to a truly no-fault dissolution of a 23 year marriage.
Nick bounced back, co-founded a seven person firm that developed and provided automated mapping and facilities management software and systems to the electric distribution industry. The firm was successful and when the technology edge eroded after three years he returned to consulting with Ebasco Business Consulting, where he worked in Chile, Jamaica, and Hong Kong before moving on to Southeast Asia with Resource Management International, Inc. which eventually became Navigant Consulting, Inc.
He returned to California to assist the state through a metamorphical energy crises during 2001-2005, including the selling of $11 billion in revenue bonds and renegotiation of 10,000 MWs of long-term energy contracts.
He established Asian Energy Advisors in December 2005 to focus on the Philippine markets.